having issues with my speaker setup

I took the advise of a few of you and now it appears i have to relearn mixing with this current setup..

previously, i had my near field monitors on desks with no mopad close to the wall and i learned the sound of the room well enough to record and mix that way...i heard plenty of bass and kick drum.

now, i got myself a pair of monitor stands with mopad, and have them 2 feet away from the wall, and am correctly positioned in the room with an the even triangle from speakers to listener.

The bass and kick drum have almost disappeared....The sound of my mixes are now strange and foreign to me...not just my mixes but any music i listen to now.

so i guess i have to relearn it all....or am i learning it for the first time correctly...

either way...im kind of at a loss...

suggestions or thoughts?

Well this can be an isasue and I can almost say that what you were doing before was probably incorrect and what you are doing now might be much more accurate.

Having speakers close to walls and on tables can create all sorts of issues. Not only with bass build up in the corners and near walls etc but also with other surfaces vibrating that should not be.

I downloaded the manual for your speakers and it says that you have to block up ports etc if you are close to walls. So I asume you have unblocked any ports etc...Are you in the best position in the room now. Maybe you are smack in the middle of a low frequency null point (standing wave) and that is why you are not hearing any low end. Can you move one or both speakers around the room a bit to try and perhaps determine if there is a better sound to be had somewhere else. Also what happens if you move around while the speakers are playing. Is the low end present in other parts of the room?

But putting speakers on MoPads and on stands is a step in the right direction. There was a whole thread devoted to that a while ago. My speakers are on heavy concrete stands and I just love the sound of them now, they are seriously better than before. To confirm how things sound you need to take a very well mixed and mastered CD somewhere else where you know you are listening to an accurate system and have a good listen in there. Then come back and compare that to how your speakers sound now and you might find they are closer to that sound than you think.

My guess is you may be in a bad position now and you need to get away from that and try listening to your monitors in another part of the room. Stick it out because once you get used to the sound of them well isolated like that on stands you will never go back and you mixes will only get better.

I hate to put a damper on your enthusiasm, but shouldn't your speakers be firing down the long dimension of your room?

Like this:

why would you want to spread 'nearfield' monitors, 8' or more apart, in a 8-1/2 foot wide room?

If you are mixing on 5" speakers, they are almost certainly going to have a serious bass deficiency. It's likely that the bass buildup you were getting with the speakers close to the wall was disguising the lack of bass from the speakers. Now you're hearing them more accurately, and it's only now become obvious that they were lacking bottom all along.

You're still ahead of the game, though, because that artificial bass was not uniform and therefore not representative of what was really going on in your mixes. At least now you're starting from a more realistic place.

Your best bet, if you can afford it, is to add a subwoofer to cover those missing frequencies. Of course, without careful placement of the subwoofer you could easily find yourself right back in the same situation, with unrealistic bass. It can be tricky finding the right spot for a sub in a small room.

You are right, 8" speakers would extend the range downward enough that you wouldn't need a sub, and although that's a better solution it's also going to be more expensive. That's why I suggested a subwoofer - it's cheaper than buying new nearfields. I use a little M-Audio 10" sub that works well, gets down to 28Hz and only set me back $400. I have the crossover set low so it only takes over where my (7.25") main speakers fall off, around 50Hz.

Before:



After :



and my tv grew to 32 inches, cool

Looking at those pics and seeing where you sit and where the speakers are I can say that in my opionin they are too far apart. Many make this mistake. Also are they at the right height. Are your ears in line with the tweeters etc.  I am also not a big fan of laying them down horizontally either. (they are not really designed that way) The tweeters are more extended than the woofers sideways.  Stand them up the right way and lower the stands a bit. You might also find things sound different as well.

The soundfield that extends between two speakers is like a parallel ribbon. If they are too close, you get a bulging of energy around the centre and things that are panned centre sound too loud. Hence you will hold them back. Speakers that are too far away from each other create a weakness in the centre and things panned centre end up a little low in volume. You tend to compensate by bringing centered tracks up a bit. These centered parts can sound too loud on other more accurate systems. (Another great reason for using a small mono speaker at low volume for checking things, it eliminates all these variables)

The priorty is to get the speakers the corrcet distance apart, not placing LCD monitor screens. This is the reason why very large screens are in fact silly unless you can get them sitting in between or just behind the speakers. Set the speakers first and then deal with monitors screens after that. It could also explain the lack of low end. When they are the correct distance apart the bottom end will reinforce each other nicely in the centre too.

A great test is to listen carefully (blindfolded) while two friends pull your speakers apart slowly. You need a long piece of wood or plank to do this properly. Start with them too close, after a while you will hear everything sounding great and you get a nice ghost in the centre image as well. When they go too far apart, the ghost in the centre falls apart and disappears. So then you bring them just back in for that strong ghost in the centre image again. You can do this with your monitors in mono as well. It emphasises the ghost in the centre image.

Your mixes will get much better when you get this set correctly. But as I said the equilateral triange is pretty darn close. I sit 1.1 meters away from each of my monitors and they are 1.1 meters apart. They sound perfect like that. You need to get a tape measure out and cheack all this accurately. Don't do it by eye only.

I used to have those same speakers. On the advice of the manufacturer, I stuffed socks into the ports. Surprisingly, it helped to even out the rough low end. What worked best was only plugging one port on each side. For real.

I used white athletic socks on the presumption that 100% cotton would be more acoustically absorbent than a polyester blend. However, they were not cosmetically pleasing and invited ridicule from visitors, so I switched to dark gray foam.

batsbrew


why would you want to spread 'nearfield' monitors, 8' or more apart, in a 8-1/2 foot wide room?

Sorry - that wasn't to scale.
 
The equilateral triangle set up is the way to go - about 4-6 feet between speakers and the same to your ears should be about right.
 
I personally can't work at anything like 3 feet away - it's too close.
  
 

you know, i never took the plastic off the manual...lol...It seems both placements are recommended by Alesis:

right from the manual :
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HORIZONTAL PLACEMENT:

Horizontal placement is a recommended arrangement with the M1's because the left and right mirror-image pair permits a symmetrical alignment of drivers and ports. This will be conductive to a balanced mix. skipping along --- The (vocal) image will be narrower than if the speakers are placed vertically, it will be possible to place the vocalist with great precision at center stage. In this orientation there will be less chance of first reflections from either sidewalls or the console coloring your mix..

VERTICAL PLACEMENT :

Vertical placement of the M1's is highly recommended. This position will simulate the soundfield that will be heard in most consumers' homes and (to a great extent) their cars. For this reason, even if the M1's are positioned horizontally for all of your mixing, the vertical position should always be used in the final "playback check" mode.

There are a couple of drawbacks to vertical placement of a nearfield monitor relating mostly to room interaction effects. Vertical placement allows the M1's to portray your mix with the widest and deepest soundstage possible, so many people in the control room have an image of the "sweet spot". However, this dispersion pattern in a control room with walls in too close proximity to the speakers can add strong reflections to the sound you hear, muddying your mix. and so on

So it seems you need both ways, and it depends on the room....

one more excerpt from the manual :

Generally, in the playback check mode, you want to arrange the speakers in the same equilateral listening triangle that you do in the nearfield setup, but instead of each side of the triange being about 3 feet long, the distances between stereo speakers and to your listening position should be between 7 and 12 feet. <------what?????

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yes , i put the tweeters in as recommended. thanks again. seems individual results may vary....

One of these days I'll learn how to use the quote option on these messages.  Groan.....